❦ 10 May 2022 14:30 -06, Sam Hartman:
> 2) We value being able to build from source when we can. We value
> being able to have reproducible builds when we can. We don't want to
> take steps backward in those areas in order to get hardware working
> better.
Is there any firmware that would match this? This seems like a
complication without any current application.
> As a reminder, firmware does sometimes run on the CPU (microcode, UEFI),
> sometimes is software, sometimes is more like data.
I see microcode as a firmware for the CPU. It is loaded into the CPU and
is not executed by the CPU in the regular way (loaded in memory, PC
point to it). We do not distribute non-free UEFI implementation and I
don't see how it would help to use hardware (usually, this is shipped
with the hardware). All the firmwares we are interested in are the ones
that get loaded to a piece of hardware.
[...]
> * Proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers.
>
> Personally I think most if not all of the above are in the same category
> as firmware at least in terms of how I think about them and software
> freedom.
This is quite a stretch. Maybe discuss this later. Otherwise, we will
never have anything.
--
Write and test a big program in small pieces.
- The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan & Plauger)
